For individuals This suggestion is to get comfortable and familiar with the concept of eugenics - a concept that holds a lot of information about cultura...
Digital Eugenics and the Extinction of Humanity
If we are to combat the AI industry’s push to build digital gods, we have to understand the ideology of the antihumanist project, writes Dr. Émile P. Torres.
Scientific institutions have a long history of anticipatory obedience
Societies should learn from this and speak up to support inclusion
The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence
The stated goal of many organizations in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) is to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an imagined system with more intelligence than anything we have ever seen. Without seriously questioning whether such a system can and should be built, researchers are working to create “safe AGI” that is “beneficial for all of humanity.” We argue that, unlike systems with specific applications which can be evaluated following standard engineering principles, undefined systems like “AGI” cannot be appropriately tested for safety. Why, then, is building AGI often framed as an unquestioned goal in the field of AI? In this paper, we argue that the normative framework that motivates much of this goal is rooted in the Anglo-American eugenics tradition of the twentieth century. As a result, many of the very same discriminatory attitudes that animated eugenicists in the past (e.g., racism, xenophobia, classism, ableism, and sexism) remain widespread within the movement to build AGI, resulting in systems that harm marginalized groups and centralize power, while using the language of “safety” and “benefiting humanity” to evade accountability. We conclude by urging researchers to work on defined tasks for which we can develop safety protocols, rather than attempting to build a presumably all-knowing system such as AGI.
Farming is Why Humanity is Fucked
A mind-shattering concept from a first-year university class that upended how I think about humanity. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy argues that totalitari…
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a 1902 collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. The essays, initially published in the English periodical The Nineteenth Century between 1890 and 1896, explore the role of mutually beneficial cooperation and reciprocity in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against theories of social Darwinism that emphasize competition and survival of the fittest, and against the romantic depictions by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love. Instead, Kropotkin argues that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of human and animal communities and, along with the conscience, has been promoted through natural selection.
Biological Sex is a social construct
I recently tweeted, as an aside, that biological sex is a social construct, and the backlash and attacks were swift, incredulous and heavily reliant upon very basic biology. There is a common perce…
Epstein couldn't stop emailing people about eugenics
In the latest files, the trafficker gives it a Silicon Valley–pilled name: "genetic altruism."
Georgie Newson - Thinking Collectives: Biological Naturalism and the Problem of Group Minds
Seven Generations Principle: Healing the Past & Shaping the Future — The Indigenous Foundation
This is adapted from an Unrooted podcast episode by Breanne Smith @breazieboozhoo What if I told you that the choices we make today could shape the lives of those who come seven generations after us? And that we are the bridge between our ancestors’ resilience & our descendants’ future.
The Tragedy of the Commons
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Social Norms and Cultural Evolution
A collection of ideas to do with social norms, cultural evolution, and how we learn from others
AI as Social Technology: Astor Lecture by Professor Henry Farrell
Bayesian Inference of Social Norms as Shared Constraints on Behavior
What people learn from punishment: A cognitive model
Spurious normativity enhances learning of compliance and enforcement behavior in artificial agents
Deference, Dissent, and Dispute Resolution: An Experimental Intervention Using Mass Media to Change Norms and Behavior in Rwanda
How Does Media Influence Social Norms? Experimental Evidence on the Role of Common Knowledge
